Following searches by police and pressure from local elders on their captors, the Bannu police chief stated that the abducted officers had been freed.
According to a senior police officer, seven police officers who had been abducted the previous day in southwest Pakistan were “safely” retrieved on Tuesday night.
According to sources who spoke to Anadolu on Tuesday, hours-long fighting in the northwest Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa resulted in the kidnapping of seven Pakistani police officers, the deaths of eight terrorists, and the death of one soldier.
In Bannu district, close to the tense North Waziristan tribal region—once the domain of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a coalition of multiple militant groups that have been engaged in conflict with law enforcement and security forces for almost 18 years—the suspected militants abducted seven police officers.
Anadolu was informed by Bannu police chief Ziauddin Ahmed that the abducted officers were freed following searches by police and pressure from local elders on their captors.
Over the past few months, terrorist strikes have increased in Pakistan, primarily targeting the country’s northwest and southwest.
A police official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told Anadolu that eight members of the so-called Lashkar-e-Islam terrorist group, including its top commander Ameer Tayyeb, were killed in clashes that occurred Monday and Tuesday in the unrest-plagued Tirah valley of Khyber tribal district, which is located close to the Afghan border.
He claimed that five other militants had been hurt in the battles.
An official from Deputy Commissioner Khyber’s office denied that eight police personnel were killed in the confrontations, despite unverified allegations to the contrary.
